Without a doubt, the tech industry’s new economics are creating major tumult in the marketplace. “Services,” not products, and “in the cloud,” not on the computer, are just two of the major trends forcing IT services providers to continually predict future market demand and adjust strategy accordingly. More than ever, it’s imperative to understand where firms will rely on third-party providers in the coming year . . . and also where they’ll increase spend.

As you may know, Forrester fields a 20-minute Web survey each year to commercial buyers of enterprise IT services as part of Forrester’s Forrsights for Business Technology (formerly named “Business Data Services”). This year, we’ll continue to collect responses from IT decision-makers at companies with 1,000 or more employees across the US, Canada, France, the UK, and Germany. As we’re designing the survey now, our commitment to strategists is that we’ll write the questions with your underlying need in mind: to predict and quantify tech industry growth and disruption.

Here are a few new questions you’ll be able to answer with our 2010 data insights:

Which areas of innovation are turned into business- or IT-funded projects? . . . How mature is vendor governance/oversight compared with three years ago? . . . How are firms dealing with the rising influence of Digital Natives? . . . What are the plans, strategies, and barriers for moving from a staff augmentation to a fully managed services model? . . . How will an uptick in selective sourcing strategies translate to you as the service provider tailoring your go-to-market plans according to current customer challenges?

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Last week, as part of the debate on the 600B border security bill, Senator Charles E. Schumer from New York reportedly called the Indian offshore IT firms in general and Infosys in particular “chop shops” — a reference to the locations where criminals dismantle stolen cars for spare parts. As always, the Indian press has immediately reacted. But let’s not take the comment out of context; US Senator Charles Schumer calls Infosys 'chop shop' - India Business - Business - The Times of India. Senator Schumer is showing that in an election year, he is “standing up” for American jobs.

But that said, as we head into the midterm elections with 9.5% unemployment and very little job growth, there will be more comments like this unfortunately, and the Indian firms and NASSCOM need to be prepared with their own PR counterattack and story. Offshore customers would also be advised to take the same advice and have a clear PR plan ready to go at a moment’s notice in case they get raked over the coals as part of the rhetoric.